The WEDGIES are at it again, this time talking about NDEs (last time it was dreams producing CSI)
Heres’s the link:
and the old one
Both posted by Barry Arrington on NKendall’s behalf.
This thread is for commentary for those of us who can’t participate there.
As a devout Christian, I’d rather hang out with materialists in universities and theskepticalzone than hangout with ISIS theists.
It seems they’ve abandon the pretence of having their own branch of science, Sal.
Is Barry angling to become a DI fellow. They need more lawyers and less scientists.
It seems odd that so much trouble goes to producing bodies and brains, when about all they do is hold back our supernatural minds.
Just another fact about the Inscrutable Designer, I guess.
Glen Davidson
The post falls off the rails in the second sentence.
If your conscious sense of yourself changed, how could you possibly be aware of this? A person’s sense of oneself is a snapshot in time.
[/pedant]
Well, it’s a snapshot of one’s view of oneself over time, at a given time. Hence the sense of a continuous self, albeit a picture that is constantly updated.
Elizabeth,
The first sentence needs question mark also. I’m evolving language, there wais minimal fitness degradation.
Considering the typical theist looks forward to an eternity of spiritual life, the earthly life is just an eyeblink. And of course, people who die before age 5 really don’t have any lasting memories at all. So it suggests the question, what’s the point?
On the other hand, I was brought up to recite a creed that included the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Suggesting that a body is a necessary part of what we are. The suggestion that the body is unnecessary sounds like heresy/
Exactly. There’s plenty of monism in Christian theology. I remember a homily by a great (catholic) preacher who pooh-pooh’d the idea of the soul as “a kind of helium balloon we are handed at some point in utero, and carry around with us until we release it at death”.
His view (IIRC) was that was the whole point of the “resurrection of the body”.
I have been pondering the same big questions since age 11. that’s almost 60 years.
My age 11 opinions are anchored by three events. One was confirmation classes. the second was the publication by Life magazine of a series on human evolution. The third was a club of sorts, several friends who met at least once a week to ponder imponderables. Around age 12 I acquired a book, the equivalent of comparative religion for dummies.
So I know that despite the slow accumulation of knowledge, my sense of my place in the universe hasn’t changed much. It was a bit scary to make a final break from belief, and it took several years, but the die was cast by age 12.
I don’t have any idea why the sense of continuity would argue against materialism. I do know that when I argued that what made a person different from a bag of chemicals was the arrangement of the chemicals, i was banned from UD.
Yeah, I have a huge disagreement with my ex-spouse about this: if my memory has changed or drifted from what “really” happened (leaving aside, for now, whether any of us could be objective witnesses in the present moment to the reality of our own lives) then how would I know I was misremembering things? Because they tell me they remember it vividly and, according to them, it happened differently than what I now remember? That’s not a good reason to believe I’m wrong. But neither is telling myself “I remember” a good reason to believe I’m right. Who to believe, who to believe.
That’s why I refuse to argue with anyone about “what really happened” “back then” in our interaction. Try to use a perceived past action as a springboard to move forward, sure! Try to use it to settle the score, nope.
However, if you have been told. all your life, to believe that you have an immortal soul, then it makes sense you would come to also believe that your consciousness cannot possibly have ever changed without you noticing it. (Even if you don’t claim that your human consciousness is identical with your immortal soul, I can see how consciousness and soul would come to share the same presumed characteristic of “unchanging”.)
Poor babies. It must be so dreadful feeling like your identity was carved in stone by your jealous god before you were even born, and you have to shuffle through your assigned part your whole life without hope of change.
My sense of self is immutable, nkendall? No, thanks anyways! I’ll take organic, sloppy, fallible, and changeable, any day over set-in-stone by god.
Yes, but why?
Glen Davidson
Well, it doesn’t.
Well, human memory is pretty good, but the manner in which it isn’t does suggest that we construct memory on the fly – that it is nothing like a “store” as in the files we mostly manage to keep intact on hard-drives. Memory “retrieval” appears to be a recreation rather than an opening of a possibly-corrupted file, and imagining the future seems to use very similar brain processes to memory.
From nkendall’s OP:
Another goofy argument from nkendall, who apparently has never heard of amnesia (both retrograde and anterograde). If the soul is the locus of our memories, then how is it that brain injuries can cause amnesia?
These anti-materialism posts are the most entertaining. I hope we get back to flying monks.
A quick thought experiment: Imagine three categories of ‘explanation’ (don’t get too hung up on the word): Supernatural (religion and such) Natural (science and such) and we don’t know.
Now think back to the dawn of man and the distribution of those explanations, compared to now. There are certainly more things to explain these days, but it my contention that “science” and “we don’t know” always take from supernaturalism and supernaturalism only ever gives up ground, it never makes advances.
I think this highlights my point:
https://whyevolutionistrue.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/religious-discoveries.jpg?w=336&h=336
keiths,
The brian is a soul radio and when bits get damaged all the message can’t get through or you only get smooth jazz. Or something.
Rich,
Conservative talk radio, 24/7.
I had an uncle (in-law) that had amnesia as a result of a stroke. He had it as a relative young man and survive 25 years, each day waking up and having to be reminded that he had been sick. He gradually developed some awareness of his condition.
When the movie Memento came out, I wondered if keeping a diary would be of any benefit to such a person.
Barry actually exhibits some self-awareness in that thread:
I don’t see much need or benefit in conflating anti-materialism with ID or moral theory. Unconscious machines can make designed objects. There might be a philosophical debate if there must be an ultimate non-material entity to make designs, but certainly not proximal entities (aka machines).
The materialism, spiritual, moral debate is more in the realm of creationism or other theories, not ID proper, imho.
What do you see as “ID proper”, stcordova? Because certainly the DI, which is a main promoter of ID, does see ID as “anti-materialist”, quite explicitly (see Wedge document, but also its output and the output from ENV).
Bad news for NDE woo:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150430124107.htm
H/T Timothy McDougal @ AtBC
Salvador Cardoza:
Good for you Salvador. Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot would be proud of you. Your mom and dad, not so much.
More Barry:
“Here is where the story gets very sad. You see, materialism is a stunted, narrow-minded and provincial way of looking at the world. A more robust ontology allows one to take the world as he finds it and revel in the full panoply of its grandeur, beauty and mystery. But materialism says if self-evident facts conflict with its precepts, to hell with the facts; the precepts come first. The god of materialism is a harsh taskmaster, and he forces all of his servants to wear blinders lest they be tempted to behold the forbidden facts. And E, having heeded his god and donned his blinders, literally cannot see the beauty, vastness and glory of his immaterial mind. Instead, he stamps his foot, gets red in the face, and chants, “I’m a meat robot; I’m a meat robot.” Madness; sheer madness.”
Barry has my permission to shuffle off that mortal coil.
Full of hate? I rest my case.